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Mourning Family Reflects on Its Past After Accident

Relatives mourn in the home of Maria Nuñez Gonzalez, the driver of the S.U.V. that plunged off the Bronx River Parkway on Sunday.Credit
Marcus Yam for The New York Times

When one of their daughters told them in the late 1970s that she was moving to the United States, Ana Julia Martínez and Jacobo Nuñez did not stand in her way. They were poor, illiterate farmers with a big family living on a ranch in the Dominican Republic. It was the only life they knew; they had different aspirations for their children.

“They were looking for something more” than could be found in the Dominican Republic, recalled Ignacio Nuñez, the couple’s oldest son, who added: “They agreed with her decision.”

The daughter, 21 at the time, moved to New York in 1979 and found a job in a garment factory in SoHo. Over the ensuing decades, 6 of her 11 siblings would follow her to New York — all finding work and, to varying degrees, realizing their parents’ long-held dreams for them. They would raise children, send some of them to private school, become homeowners and see the first of their family enter college.

Photo

Jazlyn Gonzalez and Maria Nuñez Gonzales.

But that smooth arc of family history was suddenly ruptured on Sunday when an S.U.V. carrying Ana Julia Martínez, 81, and Jacobo Nuñez, 85, as well as two of their daughters and three of their grandchildren, struck a median barrier on the Bronx River Parkway and plunged off an overpass, killing everyone in it.

On Monday, as the authorities continued to investigate the accident, scores of relatives and friends gathered at one of the family’s homes, a two-story, clapboard-sided house in the Bronx, to grieve the deaths and remember the victims. Their recollections described a narrative of hope and hard work, spanning four generations and bridging two countries.

“I always tell my mother, we could make a movie out of our family story,” said Nino Torres, 24, a grandson of Ms. Martínez and Mr. Nuñez and an architecture student at the State University at Albany. The story, he said, was about “how you could come from nothing to having something successful, having the American dream.”

On Monday, the authorities said they still did not know what caused the driver, Maria Nuñez Gonzalez, 45, to strike the median barrier. Paul J. Browne, a spokesman for the New York Police Department, said investigators estimated the speed of the vehicle, a Honda Pilot, at 68.5 miles an hour at the time of the crash, exceeding the 50 m.p.h. speed limit. He said there was no evidence that a tire blew out before the impact with the median, as some witnesses had reported.

Photo

Naily Rosario and Maria Nuñez Rosario.

Investigators said that after striking the median, the front left tire of the Honda was knocked off its rim. The vehicle then careened across other lanes of traffic before the right front tire hit a two-foot curb, launching the S.U.V. into the air, over a four-foot rail, and into a nonpublic area of the Bronx Zoo, 60 feet below.

In addition to Ms. Nuñez Gonzalez and her parents, the other victims included Maria Nuñez Rosario, 39; her daughters Naily Rosario, 7, and Marlyn Rosario, 3; and Jazlyn Gonzalez, 10, a daughter of Ms. Nuñez Gonzalez. The police provided different spellings of some of the victims’ names on Sunday.

The family plans to hold a wake for the seven victims on Thursday afternoon in the Parkchester section of the Bronx.

The victims’ roots wind back to a simple farm in Dajabón Province in the northwest of the Dominican Republic. The elder Mr. Nuñez had inherited the farm from his father and grew a range of fruits and vegetables, including avocado, mango, yuca and plantains, which he sold in local markets. They also kept livestock and other farm animals, relatives said.

Photo

Marlyn Rosario

“He could barely write his name,” Ignacio Nuñez recalled.

The couple eventually had 12 children, and the senior Mr. Nuñez had another seven with a second woman, his son said. In the decades after the first Nuñez sister migrated to the United States, five other sisters — including two of the crash victims — and a brother would follow.

As their family scattered, Ms. Martínez and Mr. Nuñez, observant Catholics, were content to remain behind on the farm, where they rose at dawn every day and worked beyond sunset, Ignacio Nuñez said. “They had their house, their land, their chickens, their pigs,” he said.

A new generation of Nuñezes was born in New York. Ms. Martínez and Mr. Nuñez would eventually count dozens of grandchildren, both Dominican-born and American-born.

The American contingent maintained the family’s Catholic faith, with the children attending parochial schools, including the St. Raymond Elementary and High Schools in Parkchester, and family members were a regular presence at Mass in their Bronx parishes.

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Ana Julia Martínez and Jacobo Nuñez

Jazlyn Gonzalez, one of the victims, was planning to take her first communion next Saturday, relatives said. She attended St. Raymond’s Elementary School where the principal, Sister Patricia Brito, described her on Monday as “lovely” and “well-liked by everyone.”

The immigrants also carried Ms. Martínez and Mr. Nuñez’s strong work ethic. They found jobs at restaurants, stores and elsewhere.

Five years ago, Maria Nuñez Rosario and Maria Nuñez Gonzalez started working part time for the custodial services division at Fordham University. They were hard workers who often talked about their families, co-workers said on Monday.

Several years ago, Juan Gonzalez, the husband of Maria Nuñez Gonzalez, saved up enough money from his work as a cabdriver to buy the white, clapboard-sided house on Taylor Avenue in the Clason Point section of the Bronx.

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Pedestrians stop on Taylor Avenue in the Bronx to see pictures of the girls who died on Sunday.Credit
Marcus Yam for The New York Times

The two branches of the family remained threaded together through phone calls, e-mails and the shuttling of relatives between New York and the Dominican Republic.

The American-born grandchildren would come to know their grandparents during vacations in the Dominican Republic. Mr. Torres said he was amazed by his grandparents’ energy, even in recent years. His grandmother was constantly cooking and cleaning, he said, and his grandfather would work “like he was young” — “To me he was like Superman,” Mr. Torres said.

Ms. Martínez and Mr. Nuñez flew to the United States on Thursday for a monthlong visit with their relatives, their third trip to New York in a decade, Ignacio Nuñez said.

They were staying with part of the family on Astor Avenue in the Pelham Gardens section of the Bronx. On Sunday, Maria Nuñez Gonzalez picked up her parents in her Honda and was taking them, along with her sister and the three children, to pray at Holy Cross Church, relatives said. From there, they planned to gather at the Taylor Avenue house for a big family meal, a Sunday tradition, which would probably have included chicken, rice, beans and a dish made of plantains called mofongo, relatives said.

Jonel Gonzalez, 18, the son of Maria Nuñez Gonzalez and a student at Pace University, said he received a call from a cousin on Sunday afternoon with the news that his mother and sister had been in an accident. At the time, he recalled, he did not realize it was something “big.”

Looking stunned, he walked away and into the embrace of a relative.

Joseph Goldstein and Randy Leonard contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on May 1, 2012, on page A18 of the New York edition with the headline: Mourning, A Family Reflects On Its Past. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe